


Should've

by Elisexyz



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-07 00:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20515817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Five times Hook messes up the whole stepfather thing.(And one time he sets things right. Or tries to.)





	Should've

**Author's Note:**

> So. guess who was having Hookfire feels, for a change?  
This contains some Hook&Henry (although it's not exactly about the two of them per se), and mentions of Emma/Hook when it appears in canon, because the story follows the canonical events up until the s3 finale, but they eventually break up amicably. S4 is completely ignored, let's pretend like there was no Elsa at the end and Marian was actually Marian (which doesn't even come up in this fic because Hook couldn't care less about Regina's love life, but still).  
Enjoy!

The first time is massive and messy, the situation spinning out of control before he can even realize how quickly they are headed for destruction.

Baelfire wasn’t meant to find out about Milah, not like this, not when he had the time to get riled up before Killian could even get a word in, attempt to explain that he has loved his mother dearly and never meant to hurt either one of them.

(If he’s being honest, though, he doesn’t even know when he planned to tell him. Things were way too serene for him to risk shattering it all.)

Baelfire yells and cries, spits out venom like he’s suddenly become his father’s son, and Killian’s edges are way too sharp for him not to retaliate.

He won’t be abandoned, he won’t be rejected. If Baelfire doesn’t care for him enough to listen, Killian doesn’t care enough to protect him against his own selfish interests. That is how it works, _a pirate’s life for you, my boy_.

You don’t point a sword at your captain’s throat and expect to survive to tell the tale.

(Still, he begs to be given a second chance, up until the last minute. He begs, and he hopes, and it gets thrown in his face.)

(It’s no matter, he tells himself, he needs Baelfire even less than Baelfire needs him.)

The second time, he somehow manages to sink even lower.

It is not technically by his hand that he dies, but Killian finds himself in business with the woman who killed Baelfire like his life meant nothing, not even after she spent months posing as his fiancée, and his fingers suddenly feel soaked in blood.

He backstabs his allies with ease, feeling for once like he is on the right side of things, even fully knowing that getting in bed with the heroic sort is rarely a good idea – _The things we do for our children_ –, and he does his best to hold yet another candle for the dead.

He only drops it when it becomes evident that heroics are going to come at the cost of self-preservation, and, well, that is one step too far. It sounds reasonable, up until the moment when he finds out that among the people he will be screwing over to save his own skin there is Baelfire’s son, and the notion shakes him way more than it’d be comfortable to admit.

He leaves anyway, because it won’t be his first time stepping on a little boy to get what wants. He can do it.

(Except he can’t, he discovers, not with Emma’s words stuck in his head and the ghost of Baelfire walking around his ship, his accusing gaze burning on his skin and the echo of his laughter making his stomach shrink.)

He turns back, only to find out that he’s come a little too late and Henry has been taken to Neverland.

(And isn’t that ridiculously ironic?)

He can only take a breath and offer to help, half-heartedly hoping that it will be penance enough to silence his conscience.

(Too little, too late.)

The third time, he’s on Neverland, Baelfire alive and grown standing right in front of him.

He looks so different that it isn’t all that hard for Killian to _forget_, to see him as only another man, a rival for Emma’s affections, somebody to compete with rather than—well, rather than a boy to whom he owes a great deal of apologies.

He doesn’t have to fear that the door will be closed on his face once again if he is the first one to pretend like nothing happened, like Emma Swan is the only thing that matters, the only link between two strangers.

(After all, nobody has to know how little doubt there was in his head when he was posed the question: _will you save Baelfire, or keep Emma for yourself?_ Killian is no hero, but sometimes the right thing to do happens to also be the only possible choice.)

Baelfire is grown and bitter and Killian is an excellent liar, he can trick himself all too easily. Things are too complicated for him to consider doing anything else.

(If it’s easier, why shouldn’t he do it, right?)

The fourth time might not be exactly his fault, but it sure as hell feels like it is.

Baelfire was already dead when he came back to this world. There was nothing that he could have done, even if he hadn’t let him walk out of the hospital when he asked. Belle has explained it all to him, she has shown him the book, there was nothing to be done.

Yet, when they put him in the ground and the image of Baelfire as he walked away keeps playing on a loop in his mind, Killian feels horribly guilty for not having pulled him back, keeping him close enough to at least _try_ to do something about it.

(He shouldn’t have been stupid enough to let him go again.)

The fifth time, he thinks he is doing okay, at least at first.

He spends time with Henry, telling him about Baelfire, perhaps letting slip a few things too many not to make it sound suspicious to a boy with no memory of magic, and although for any hint of a smile appearing on his face there’s a new wave of dawning realization of how screwed up this situation is – of how much resemblance there is between father and son –, he thinks he is doing okay.

He does his best to protect Henry, even if it gets him yelled at when Emma discovers his lies, even if once again the situation feels too out of control for him not to be reminded of that time he was stuck failing at throwing out water from a sinking longboat.

(Henry gets out of it all alive, so that’s something, isn’t it?)

Then, Emma kisses him, and things start going downhill from there.

Killian very much enjoys her company, their nights out drinking until they are a mess of giggles and clumsy kisses, stumbling to a room at Granny’s or to the bed in his cabin, if they chose to stay indoors. She’s bright and stubborn, never refusing him when he’s in the mood for some sex but giving him so much of an hard time whenever they exchange more than two sentences that it’s endearing.

(She makes him feel alive.)

One day, Emma doesn’t show up for their appointment. He waits more than it’d be dignified, because he certainly has nothing better to do, and he even attempts to call her in spite of how little familiarity there is between him and his cell phone; yet, he ends up drinking alone for the night.

They all live crammed in the same town, so he figures he will stumble across her sooner rather than later, and he will get an explanation – she probably only forgot.

Except, well, she somehow manages to avoid him for a couple of days.

(The thought of how much effort that must have taken almost makes him laugh.)

She eventually calls, offering no explanation and asking him out for lunch, which in itself is pretty worrying, because they don’t _do_ lunch. Most of the time, they don’t do _sober_ to begin with.

He can tell from Emma’s face and the stiff way that she sits across from him that this isn’t going to be a very pleasant conversation.

“I’m sorry about standing you up,” she says, offering a weak smile of circumstance. “I should have called, at least.”

“It’s alright.” He manages to swallow down his uneasiness and summon a grin, leaning back on his chair for show. “I am actually quite impressed that you managed to avoid me for two whole days, given this little hole that we live in.”

She snorts, looking down as embarrassment flashes on her face. “Yeah, not my shiniest moment, I guess.”

The silence that follows is somehow made even more awkward by the chatter surrounding them.

“Maybe I should have chosen somewhere more private,” Emma mutters, taking a look around.

“Whatever it is, just spit it out, Swan,” he says, confidently. “I’ll take it like a big boy, I promise.”

She gives him an unamused and perhaps unconvinced look – if she doesn’t believe him, she has even better people reading skills than she thinks, because for all that he is good at projecting a nonchalant attitude he would like nothing better than to run away before she can decide to leave him behind; after all, it is painfully clear that _that_ is where this is heading –, but she sighs.

“Fine.” She pauses, pressing her lips together. “I think this whole thing was a mistake,” she gets out then, all at once.

Oh, well. That stings even worse than he expected it would. Great.

“I’m sorry, I am just—not in the headspace for a relationship right now.”

He arches his eyebrows. “You seemed perfectly content up until a few days ago,” he points out, perhaps a little too bitterly not to be transparent.

Emma crosses her arms, leaning back a little. “I _know_, I just—” She takes a breath. “I talked with Henry. He is—I have not been spending time with him because I preferred getting drunk with you, and he is very upset, after Neal and—and everything—he didn’t really want to tell me, but—” She clenches her jaw, giving him a pained look. “I have been a shitty mom lately. Which figures, because I am still new at not running from things and—and I shouldn’t have jumped into this thing with you looking for a distraction. I’m really sorry.”

Oh, well, that makes sense.

Killian had noticed that Henry seemed to not want to breathe the same air as him after he got his memories back, and especially after he and Emma started seeing each other. He shrugged it off, maybe because deep down he had a feeling he knew what that was about and—

Well.

He might have been putting a lot of effort into not thinking about _that_.

Why think about it when you can’t do anything about it either way, right? The witch is dead already, he has no quest for revenge to give meaning to his grief, so why should he dwell on the loss, right? He had a beautiful woman very enthusiastic about jumping in bed with him, what was there to think about, right?

“I hope I was a _good_ distraction at least,” he attempts to joke, and even though it comes out a little weak he thinks he did alright.

Emma doesn’t seem to find it funny. “Seriously, I am sorry, I know this is a very shitty thing to do—”

Well, Killian went from promising that he’d make himself scarce, to allow Baelfire to try to fix things with his woman in peace, to just jumping right in bed with said woman when his body was still warm.

He probably shouldn’t criticize anybody else’s poor form, really.

“Oh, it’s alright,” he says, lightly, his traitorous conscience beginning to wail, because apparently it likes to show up late to the party and then work for two. “It was fun while it lasted.”

(Isn’t pretending like they never even existed the greatest offense one can cause to the dead?)

He goes to Henry when the boy is wandering outside, alone by the lake, throwing stones in it with his mind clearly lost somewhere else.

“May I join you?” Killian asks, his tone friendly enough to match his smile.

Henry glances at him, his face twisting in a bit of a grimace, he shrugs and throws his hands in his pockets as he mumbles: “If you want.”

(Hell if the lad doesn’t look like his father then.)

Killian half-heartedly bends over to grab a stone to throw in, somehow feeling way more cowardly than warranted as he tries to get himself to voice his offer.

Henry kicks a small rock, not hard enough for it to fall in the lake, his eyes fixated on the ground and deliberately away from his newfound company. He is still very much the same boy that buried a man he couldn’t remember and was awfully starved for information about him. The only difference being that he now is much less well disposed towards Killian.

(He definitely shouldn’t be afraid of rejection from a little boy.)

(_I want off this ship—_pirate.)

“We could spend some time together,” he eventually gets out, as casually as he can. Henry’s head shoots up, his expression a mask of surprise. “Talk about your father some more.”

Henry seems to hesitate for a moment, crossing his arms as his face hardens a little. “I don’t like you,” he eventually says, tight and stubborn and so achingly familiar.

Killian has to take it with a shrug, because, well, fair enough. “You don’t need to like me to exploit me for information, do you?”

Henry shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his lips pressed together as he evaluates him, longing slowly creeping up on his face, because as much as he may dislike Killian, this is an opportunity that apparently he doesn’t want to miss out on.

“No,” he eventually says, slowly. “I guess I don’t.”

_ Bonus:_

Rumpelstiltskin disappears without a word for a couple of months. Belle says that he went to the Enchanted Forest, set on finding a way to bring his son back in spite of the odds being set against him.

(Killian feels hope tightening his chest even as he reminds himself that having the least bit of faith in the Dark One of all people would be senselessly stupid.)

Rumpelstiltskin does come back, Baelfire in toe after apparently having ripped him away from the Dark One’s vault. He looks a little worn out, like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in quite a while, but he’s standing on his own two feet and he breaks into the biggest smile when Henry jumps into his arms, because he’s so unmistakably _alive_.

(Killian draws in a breath, his eyes stinging and a smile bubbling at his lips, and if there weren’t so many people watching he might just walk over and draw him into a hug too.)

He finds Baelfire one morning after he has walked Henry to school. He looks vaguely bored, his eyes skimming over a newspaper.

Killian slides on the bench, right beside him, to which Baelfire raises his eyebrows. “Hey. Do you need something?”

“Nope,” he replies, readily. He holds up the bag in his hands, offering a smile. “I’ve brought bagels. Henry mentioned to me once that you like them.”

Baelfire snorts, seemingly pleased. “He did, uh?” he muses, accepting the bag and taking a look inside. “Not that I don’t appreciate being bribed with food, but what exactly am I being bribed for?”

“Can’t I just be bearing gifts because I like you?” Killian offers, lightly enough not to feel uncomfortable. For a moment, though, Baelfire looks surprised enough that he might have seen right through it.

“I guess,” he says, slowly. “Well, thanks then.” He pauses, pursing his lips thoughtfully as he looks between him and the paper on his lap. “Do you mind keeping me company for a while?” he eventually asks, gesturing briefly to the work announcements. “I’m looking for a job, because I’d rather not get stuck polishing my dad’s magic shit. I love the guy, but that shop creeps me out.”

Killian’s stomach sinks in relief, and he’s smiling before he can even formulate an answer. “Of course,” he says, shifting a little on his seat to get more comfortable. “I don’t mind at all.”

(_It’s not too late to start over_.)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates comments, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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